Word 2007: Page Layout Deep Dive Tutorial

Lets have a deep and meaningful look at how we make changes to the page layout in Microsoft Office Word 2007.

Where do you find all the Page Layout buttons?

Simply click on the “Page Layout” tab in the new Ribbon menu system. By clicking on the Page Layout tab, the Ribbon displays all the functionality you need to be able to change the key page layout and formatting aspects of your document!

What can I do with the Page Layout?

Good question! By default (in Word 2007 Beta 2, although it will be similar in the final retail release) there are five groups of features which you can use to change the look and feel of your document… They are:

Themes

Page Setup

Page Background

Paragraph

Arrange

Lets have a closer look at each one.

Themes

Themes enable you to very quickly and easily change the look and feel of the entire document to a specific theme style. There are many different themes included in Word 2007 (and PowerPoint 2007 as well), and in fact by default when you create a new document, you are actually using a theme (the ‘Office’ theme). If you are tired of the look of the themes that come with Word 2007, you can download more from Microsoft Office Online!

A theme specifies the fonts to be used, the colour palette, and the styling of graphics. If you only want to use one aspect of the theme, you can! Just select the palette, font or styling from one of the three galleries in the Themes group.

Page Setup

Page setup includes all the features you need to change your margins, the orientation of the paper (portrait or landscape), the size of the paper, the number of columns on the page, as well as breaks, line numbers and hyphenation! To change all those features, simply click on the button associated with what you want to change, and select your preferred option from the gallery.

If you want more granular control over the page setup, click on the small icon in the bottom right hand corner of the page setup group, which looks like a small square with an arrow pointing out of it.

Page Background

In the Page Background group, you can add a watermark to your document, change the page color, or make your document look great with a page border. A watermark is a grayed out image or text which appears in the background of your document. For example, you could have the word ‘draft’ in the background of your document, so everyone reading knew that it was still a draft.

Again, simply select your watermark or colour from the gallery when you click on the button.

Paragraph

The paragraph group is where you can modify all the aspects of the paragraphs that appear in your document. Indent essentially changes the margins for the paragraph. You can set the left indent, or the right indent, and the distance is measured in inches.

Spacing is similar to indent, however you are changing the spacing before, or after a paragraph. Spacing is measured in points (just like font size).

Again, for more granular control, click on the button in the bottom right hand corner of the group for more functionality.

Arrange

The arrange group allows you to control how objects interact with the text in your document. For example, if you have a text box in your document, you can use the arrange group to:

Set the position of the text box

Bring it to the front (in front of other objects)

Send it to the back (behind other objects)

Set the text wrapping around the text box

Set the alignment of the text box

Group the text box with other text boxes

Rotate the text box.

Again, more granular control is available via the button in the bottom right hand corner of the arrange group.

Want to learn more?

So there you have it, a deep dive tutorial into the Page Layout tab in Microsoft Office Word 2007. For more Word 2007 tutorials, tips and techniques, check out the Word 2007 category on www.thenewpaperclip.com

In a multi page document that have some pages that need to be repositioned in a different order – can this be done using thumbnails (as you can on a Mac system)or is it neccessary to
create new blank pages and copy/paste the information in.
Can you advise the best way?